Jaki Irvine
The Silver Bridge
SMART Project Space
Opening on Saturday 9th September at 21:00
Afterparty from 22.30
13th September â 14th October 2006
The Silver Bridge is an eight channel video installation that pulls together some of Jaki Irvineâs most powerfully consistent propositions. Filmed in part in Dublin Zoo, The Silver Bridge picks a path through oblique narrative, seductive imagery and a growing awareness of human and animal awkwardness. The story behind The Silver Bridge is characteristically elusive, told with a compelling selection of repeatedly unexpected scenes. From beginning to end, the notion of animism provides an allegorical relationship to that of the human condition. Irvine leads us on an experiential journey without dictating a position, letting the scenes interweave with the logic of our journey through the new exhibition spaces of SMART Project Space.
Starlings, swirling in flocks and oscillating against a blue sky are the entry into The Silver Bridge. The small specks of black create a community of form, a single body of communication, all riding currents in the air where individuals cluster then disperse as a unified body of individually flapping wings.
So begins an evocative journey through space and narrative. Each film within the eight channels of The Silver Bridge presents another window into the world. There is a tangible narrative structure which uses oblique and at times surreal form to forge connections between scenes, incidents, or the momentary isolation of an image; the blinking of a womanâs eyes when slowed to the speed of a nature documentary, or wild deer grazing with careless confidence in a forested terrain interrupted by the presence of stark white doors going nowhere, promising nothing. The awkwardness pervading each scene is emblematic of the broader intention of the work; bats, captured in the artificial confines of a zoo terrain crawl across the ground, claws grappling at earth, wings scratching in the undergrowth; the diminishing form of a woman in black crawling along the decayed limbs of an old silver bridge, making slow, uncomfortable progress. This repeated positioning of individual and communal !
social behaviour through the worlds of animals, birds and humans are the touch-stones for the viewerâs journey through the work and through Irvineâs layered and obtuse narrative. As one progresses through the exhibition spaces, the unifying evocation of what it is to return to a place seeps to the surface. By coming home, a self-conscious awareness of exterior perceptions is confronted with an interior knowledge of self, implying that all return is a negotiation with the past - with what has changed and with what apparently remains the same. Like walking through somewhere familiar yet different, one is both at home and a stranger, at ease but also awkward, or estranged.
As the cycle completes, two women â hanging bat-like from the silver bridge â are locked in an embrace, finding a brief moment of balance somewhere between memory and fantasy before losing it again.
As dusk settles over the luminously glowing old bridge, only one solitary figure remains, hanging, sheltering, alone beneath the silver bridge.
We request the pleasure of your company at the exhibition opening of Jaki Irvine: The Silver Bridge at 21.00 and on into the night for an Afterparty with visuals and sounds from Egle Budvytyte, Nathalie Bruys and Byungjun Kwon.
Jaki Irvine currently lives and works in Dublin, having spent many years in London and in Italy. Her works are single or multi-screen videos that explore with a melancholic and dreamlike humour the interaction between the natural world and the built environment, fuelled by a fascination with the human condition.
Irvine represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1997 and her works have been shown in solo and group exhibitions at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Kerlin Gallery, Tate Britain, Delfina Project Space and in many other venues throughout Europe, Australia and Japan.
The presentation of The Silver Bridge is generously supported by Culture Ireland.
SMART Project Space is kindly supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, Gemeente Amsterdam, Project BroedplaatsAmsterdam, Stichting Doen, Filmfonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.
For further information please contact Tessa Giblin, Head of Exhibitions: tessa {AT} smartprojectspace.net
Further information and updates visit: www.smartprojectspace.net
How to get here: www.smartprojectspace.net/info/location
Opening hours: Wednesday â Saturday, 12:00-18:00 hrs
SMART Project Space | Arie Biemondstraat 105-113 | NL-1054 PD Amsterdam
phone: +31 20 42 75951 | fax +31 20 247 59 53 | www.smartprojectspace.net
If this e-mail was forwarded to you by way of someone other than SMART Project Space and you wish to join our mailing list please send an e-mail to info {AT} smartprojectspace.net with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: âsubscribe e-mailing SPSâ
To Unsubscribe, please click here :
http://www.mailotron.com/box.php?funcml=unsub2&nl=21&mi=83&email=nettime-nl {AT} nettime.org